ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX21A) Review: The First of the 2nd Gen Ultrabooks
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 22, 2012 2:46 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- CPUs
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Zenbook
- Zenbook Prime
- Ultrabook
- Notebooks
The Display in Numbers
The new 1080p panel looks good, but does it make any sacrifices in its performance? Thankfully, no. Max brightness is down a bit compared to the previous generation, but it's still higher than any of the portable Macs and much higher than your typical PC displays. Black levels are much improved over the original Zenbook as well:
The resulting contrast ratio is almost tablet-like:
It's not just the basics that ASUS delivers well on, color accuracy is top notch:
Color gamut is shy of the MacBook Pro but much better than the previous Zenbook and the MacBook Air:
Size is definitely an issue here. While I think the 1920 x 1080 panel will be a very good fit for the 13.3-inch UX31, there's a smaller subset of folks who are going to appreciate it in the 11.6-inch UX21. Personally I think it's fine but at 189 PPI the 11-inch Zenbook Prime is going to be a tough sell for those who have a tough time looking at small text.
Text on the 11-inch 1080p panel
ASUS' solution is to ship the UX21 with Windows set to 125% DPI scaling by default, unfortunately most applications (including many of Microsoft's own) don't deal with non-integer DPI scaling very well.
Here's what the default desktop looks like at 125%:
And here are examples of applications that don't behave well with Windows 7's DPI scaling:
In Skype, some text elements are tiny while others are huge. PCMark Vantage is an example of where you see this as well:
Here the scaled text actually can't fit in the area allocated for it, while the rest of the text is entirely too small.
There's not much you can do to work around this today with Windows 7. You're either going to have really small text or have to deal with funny scaling. This is unfortunately a major downside to not controlling the OS layer, ASUS is at the mercy of Microsoft to get scaling for displays with high pixel densities right. Windows 8 should be better in this regard but I ran out of time to try it out on the Zenbook Prime before the embargo lift.
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techexperience - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
So, if what I see is correct, (and anand always delivers).The only difference between the Zenbook Prime UX32 $799 and $999 is hardisk space? From 320 GB to 500 GB for $200?By the way great post, Anand, as usual.
http://techexperience.net
ReverendDC - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
I believe that the UX32 is also a little thicker, and the non-DV versions have a dedicated GPU. The hard drives are also platter, not SSD.ReverendDC - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Sorry, the DV version comes with the dedicated GPU.Reflex - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Likely a faster CPU as well.UrQuan3 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Darn, I went with a Samsung 9 last year and can't afford to replace it yet. 13.3 is too big for me and 1366x768 is too low res. 12" and 1080p would be nice. Looks like an acceptable color gamut as well.Let's not make excuses for poorly written GUIs. They should resize. Games don't have a problem with that.
I do home Microsoft catches their resolution-vs-size mistake on Metro. Last I checked, Metro used fixed sizes and used higher resolutions to put more on the screen instead of allowing app links to resize. They were assuming that high resolution screens are also physically bigger. Of course that would be awful on a small, high res screen. Anyone know if they changed that?
Stanly.ok - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
I look at official Asus slides (particularly at the top of second page) and can't help but wonder ... what kind of marketer or manager made them at the last moment instead of giving this job to a professional?!name99 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
" In practice I saw a doubling of performance under the same conditions as the original Zenbook (80Mbps vs. ~40Mbps)."This seems really bad. You should have got a doubling from 40MHz 5GHz channels, and a doubling from 2x MIMO. Are you sure the laptop and the base station are both set up optimally (most importantly both are in Greenfield mode so they're not wasting a huge amount of time with g compatibility)?
My 3 yr old MBA gets around 13MB/s to an 18 month old AEBS, and I've seen the new MBAs get around 20MB/s to that AEBS, and I expect even better to the newest AEBS.
IntelUser2000 - Friday, May 25, 2012 - link
I think its the way Anand tests it. On and Macbook Air 2011 review he gets 117Mbps which is 14.6MB/s.dczyz - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Since we dont have a new MX in the small form factor yet, that UX32VD-DB71 maybe what I do with. Cant wait to see a review on it.agent2099 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
The main fault I see in this device is the VGA port. They should have included a mini display port to complement the HDMI port. That way you could run two high-resolution displays from the laptop. With my current laptop I have the HDMI out going to the television and I have the mini display port going to my 24 inch monitor.